The air around him shimmered. The tear was still open. He tried to grab hold of it, but couldn’t. He tried opening a new doorway. Again, no luck. With his hands bound, he couldn’t help them. He couldn’t do anything.
But the prickling still built to a sharp buzz, and August didn’t fight against it. He let it build until it felt as if every fiber of his being was about to unravel. Then he reached out with his magic, past Lottie, searching for nearby anchored.
He found three.
August poured every bit of energy he had left into them. Their edges solidified, and he sent them careening at the line of ministry.
Fear and shock rippled across the officers’ faces, their eyes wide with terror as they turned to run. Screams and squelching and cracking as the anchored tore through flesh and bone.
And then silence.
August shifted his attention to the last one standing. He wanted answers, and Ashcroft was going to give them to him.
The man grabbed Marlow and held her flush against him, his gun to her temple. “This was not what I agreed to,” he said, a tremor of panic in his voice. “I’m not dying for the aesran’s petty ambitions. She can go f—”
The deafening bang of the gunshot made August jump.
Marlow dropped to the ground, and the sound Felix made was pure agony as he tried to pull himself up, tried to get to her.
But Marlow didn’t look hurt. Ashcroft hadn’t fired the shot. He was the one bleeding, grasping at the wound in his thigh. August watched him fall, then looked up to find a familiar face. A boy dressed in cobalt blue, the point of his helmet shadowing his eyes, flanked by two other royal guards.
“That’s no way to speak of your aesran,” Sebastian said as he holstered his pistol, sounding bored.
His gaze swung to August, and he bowed deeply. “Mo Aesling.” He held out a key and the corner of his mouth lifted in a half smile.
August watched him closely, magic ready, as Sebastian stepped over the gore in the street and crouched to unlock thecuffs. When August lifted his hands to rub away the feeling of the metal, he froze.
No blackened veins. How was that possible?
His brow furrowed as he registered the lightness in his chest. The pain, once a constant, sharp reminder of the darkness eating through him, was simply . . . gone.
Relief burst from him in a sound caught between a laugh and a sob.
The veil was still open. But he wasn’t dying.
It hit him, then, a possibility he hadn’t considered. What if his illness wasn’t caused by his magic? What if it wasn’t punishment for using it, but the cost of suppressing it? The energy from the Hollow Dark had been seeping through the tear, and August had been absorbing it. Drawing it in. Every time he stepped through into that place, he took in more.
But instead of using it, he’d caged it. Let it rot inside him. For two years.
He’d used that energy to make the anchored solid. To make them listen.
Now it was gone, spent, his blood free of the toxin.
He’d had it all wrong.
A slow smile lifted on August’s face. He’d been right about one thing, though. His magic was dangerous. He’d never felt powerful before, and he quite liked it.
As his eyes found Felix, the smile crumbled.
He was curled on his side, his eyelids closed, breaths shallow. His light hair clung to his forehead, his veins black beneath translucent skin. August touched a hand to his arm and recoiled at the shock of cold.
Like the ring. The locket.
“Felix,” August said. “Are you alright?”
“That’s a stupid question,” Felix muttered as his eyelids fluttered open.
August traced a finger over the dark veins in Felix’s arm. He could draw power from the tear, pull the darkness into himself. So, maybe . . .
